so Sui/han won (no surprise) with an almost perfect quad twist but "just" a throw triple salchow.
probably they wanted a clean skate for preliminaries, thy won with 16 points of lead

She fell on the 3T and didn't complete the seq. Judging by the scores on the quad twist it must have been far from perfect. I think the judges are now giving them the scores they deserve. The didn't 'win' per se, they just moved on to the short program.

She fell on the 3T and didn't complete the seq. Judging by the scores on the quad twist it must have been far from perfect. I think the judges are now giving them the scores they deserve. The didn't 'win' per se, they just moved on to the short program.

those scores are still high
I think S/H could be just tired from competing at Junior Worlds or the pressure is just getting into them

Yay, Nagornyuk and Kovalenko from Uzbekistan made it! They only just got their visas and were supposed to have landed in Nice less than an hour ago. Mishe Ge tweeted just a few minutes back that they were at the rink in skates. Good luck to them - crazy not to have even had time for a warmup

ETA: oh, well done! They got a PB and should be able to qualify.

The results of the preliminary round in pairs are too predictable to comment about.

those scores are still high
I think S/H could be just tired from competing at Junior Worlds or the pressure is just getting into them

They are high for a preliminary but they'll need a landed quad sal and a nice 3T+2T+2T on Friday or they won't do well at this level. That was the only difference today. If they did those well today that would only raise their score by 10 points, far below 4CC. The judges are leveling out with them.

Good performance by I/K, 92.4 just over a mark shy of their SB from the Europeans, hopefully they can put in a good performance in the short. Still surprised that R/T have a higher ranking than them. Delighted for the young couple from Uzbekistan, even more so if they only arrived an hour before they skated, I like their style. Hopefully Z/S from Azerbijan can skate well, I really like their free dance.

Good performance by I/K, 92.4 just over a mark shy of their SB from the Europeans, hopefully they can put in a good performance in the short. Still surprised that R/T have a higher ranking than them. Delighted for the young couple from Uzbekistan, even more so if they only arrived an hour before they skated, I like their style. Hopefully Z/S from Azerbijan can skate well, I really like their free dance.

I think they landed maybe an hour before before they skated but actually arrived at the rink ten minutes before their FD. They looked pretty polished in the pics I saw, must have gotten dressed and done whatever styling they needed on the plane or in the car on the way over. She's 16 and it's their first Worlds; that they were able to skate as well as they must have is truly impressive.

I also read that both Greg Merriman and Nicholas Buckland had skate issues, so well done to them too; and I was happy to see that Hurtado/Diaz qualified with a very respectable score!